


they told stories of stars

by cadaeic



Category: The Yogscast
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-08
Updated: 2014-09-08
Packaged: 2018-02-16 15:18:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2274624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cadaeic/pseuds/cadaeic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How the space adventures of a rogue clone and an unstable lab experiment begin. Space Pirates AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	they told stories of stars

Behind them, the space station exploded.

Nano was cheering from her perch on the pilot’s seat, her hands lifted in jubilant celebration. That would have been fine except that her hands were off the steering wheel. The information chip in Lalna’s mind whispered that it was not a steering wheel at all, but it was called a yoke and that it was a common misunderstanding-

Lalna ignored the chattering of the chip. He reached over and grabbed whatever the heck it was, intending on gently steering their escape pod out of the way of any debris. The ship suddenly shuddered with yet another explosion, and Lalna accidentally yanked the yoke towards him. He found himself pressed against the side of the pod, Nano squished up against him and yelling in indignation.

Through the pod window, he could see a large piece of debris coming straight at them. It moved in the comically slow way that really, really fast objects did.

Let us-

let us back up, a bit, and let us see just how this _began_.

* * *

These days, everyone had a Lalna.

It was all the rage!

The original Lalna was a distinguished scientist, friend of the famed duo Xephos and Honeydew and, in fact, the third in command of their scientific establishment, YogLabs. He was a man of many talents and had nearly managed to score a place on the Top 267 Sexiest Physically Corporeal Humanoid Charts.

He was just narrowly beaten by the Oozing Slime Hivemind of Kaptor 612.

When YogLabs announced their latest line of clones, it was all sold out in parsecs. As in, the queue stretched out for parsecs. Everyone wanted a custom built Lalna to accompany them and to teach them great things, just as he had taught the great Xephos and Honeydew on their quest to save the universe from the dread beast Israphel, may entropy take him.

Most of the Lalna clones went to the police forces. They were augmented with cybernetic implants designed specifically to deal with and nullify psionic assailants. They could certainly deal with most things that were thrown at them, and by reports, it seems like they did.

Of course, quite a few Lalna clones were built for other needs, ahem.

We need not speak of them.

One particular clone was found to be quite faulty. He didn't know what was wrong with him. Indeed, his first memory after they stuck the information chip into his head and stuck him into the RecaLalnaibrator was being shoved into a small cell. In response to his protests, they had simply said that they needed to find out what was wrong with this particular batch, and please be quiet, Clone #4N-747a, or we will throw you into the incinerator like we did the rest of your batch.

He shut up.

He didn't shut up for very long, though.

The cell next to his was a strange shade of purple. It was empty at first, but Lalna could tell that it was normally not so. His chip was talking about the creases in the (purple) bedding and the gouged out holes in the (purple) walls, speculating about what kind of beast could do such a thing.

Lalna was looking at the drawing of the flower on the wall. It was drawn in bright red crayon.

The occupant of the cell was later seen being dragged into her cell by two Testificates. Her dark hair was long enough to just touch the floor, although that might have said more for her diminutive height, and her dark eyes were full of sullen intelligence.

Her skin was a bright, vibrant purple. It was like the cheerfulness of a hyacinth, or the image of a hyacinth that Lalna’s chip presented to him. He was sure that he’d never see one before he died, though.

She was deathly quiet, glaring at her captors and muttering under her breath. As she passed Lalna's cell, she suddenly turned towards him and her eyes widened. She began to hurl insults at him, calling him a 'no good poop for brains' and saying that she was going to fluffing murder him. Even as her captors locked her in, she continued up her barrage.

She only stopped when she ran out of breath.

At least she had the good grace to look embarrassed when Lalna explained the history of clones. He also taught her some better insults and swear words for good measure.

Her name was Flux Subject #127-

"But, that's not a name!"

She crossed her arms. "That's all they ever called me," she said. “I had a name before you- before they took me and dumped me in a vat of purple. I’ve forgotten it, though. Along with everything else.”

Lalna was sitting as close as he could to her, leaning against the slits in his glass cell. He had his eyes closed, and he was trying to think. Unfortunately, the chip in his head didn’t really help with creativity, but...

“Well, you’re kinda short,” he said. She shot him a dirty look, but he ignored it. “You could be Nano… sounds? You make… sounds?”

He was expecting her to make some disparaging remark, but she was oddly quiet at this. Finally, she said in the smallest voice that she liked it.

One day old, and he had given someone a name. He was also locked up and unlikely to live past the discovery of whatever it was that made him defect, but he had made a friend.

And that was worth it.

They spent the days talking to each other. There was a certain element of hopelessness here, but Nano was certain that one day she would get to see all the wonderful things that Lalna’s chip talked about, like red pandas and stars and hyacinths.

Red pandas sounded just so cute! Nano could imagine twisting her fingers in their fur and snuggling up as they made whatever panda sounds they made. Maybe they chirped like the birds in the cages being lowered into the flux that she was forced to generate, or screeched as they died.

She liked making the flux but she didn’t like killing innocent birdies. She longed to set the flux on the scientists and the technicians who gazed on as she was forced to murder, but they always set so many walls between them and made extra sure that she couldn’t get anywhere near them. If they had to touch her, they sent the aliens with giant noses and huge foreheads with her- and no matter how many she whittled down to the bone with her flux, there were always more.

They always sent more.

She knew she was a weapon, designed to be a conduit for the dangerous flux - the shifting, everchanging force that tainted whatever it touched and ate whatever it couldn’t change. The only reason it didn’t eat her was that she was an experiment-

not even human anymore.

Or whatever she was, before. She couldn’t remember even that, and the scientists certainly didn’t tell her anything.

Now she had Lalna, and now she had a name, and now she had hope.

And when the first explosions happened, and the locks to the cells disengaged, Nano found that when she put her mind to it, that she could run.

* * *

Everything was still.

Nano yawned and stretched, blinking the sleep from her eyes as she did so. She was lying on something nice and soft and squishy, and she let herself sink into it for a few glorious seconds before stretching some more and sitting up. She looked around at the curiously still intact pod and marvelled at the fact that they weren’t floating in the deep of space with their heads exploded.

Beneath her, Lalna snored.

They must have both been knocked out by the debris bouncing around.

She wasn’t that sorry that she was probably squishing him. In fact, it seemed that her body fit against him in a really snuggly way. She lay against his body and gazed outside the porthole, listening to his heartbeat.

There were so many stars out there, and-

She sat up and grabbed onto Lalna’s hand, and started shaking it. She was repeating his name in excitement, and as he groaned and stirred, she was pulling at his hand and pointing it outside.

“Lalna,” she said. “Lalna! Look- there’s- there’s flux out there! It’s me!” She watched Lalna sit up and crane his head towards the window, next to hers.

After a few seconds of blinking and staring, he said, “That’s not flux, Nano.”

“But it’s all purple and shiny and fluxy, Lalna!”

Lalna turned to her and smiled. He had that distant look in his eyes that meant he was talking to the weird machine in his head. “That’s a nebula,” he said. “It’s- it’s where stars are born. Great big clouds of dust all coalescing into baby stars!”

Nano tried to imagine it. “Are stars born? I thought-” She stopped. She hadn’t really spared much thought to the matter of stars, really, other than the fact that they were absolutely beautiful and she’d like to see one eventually.

And Lalna giggled, causing Nano to blush a bit in her ignorance. “Yeah, they’re born, and they live for ages and ages and ages, and then they die in a huge explosion called a supernova. Boom!”

“Stars die?”

“Yeah, but it’s really cool to see. Well, from the images in my encyclopedia, anyway. Wish you could see them, but I bet there’s a supernova out there somewhere.”

For a while, Lalna went on about the properties of stars. He grabbed Nano’s hand and pointed at various stars, talking about which star they most likely were and describing their properties. There were so many, and they were so bright, and for a while Nano was lost in the story of stars.

If only the stars could provide for them.

They only had supplies for a little while, Lalna said. And- the YogLabs people would surely be after them. Lalna was, well, a Lalna clone and a human with bright purple skin would surely be noticed. There were humanoid races with purple skin, but none as beautifully bright as this.

He blushed as he said that.

We’re gonna be outlaws, Nano. We’re gonna be hunted.

And Nano looked at him and said- hell yes.

* * *

It was a normal day in the life of the F.S.S _Lombucket_ , or to use its full name, _The Nilesy and Lomadia's Best And Greatest #1 Space Ship That Happens to Import And Export Really Good Pools and Pool Accessories And House Owls Too Sometimes_ , sometimes shortened to _TNLBG1SSTHIERGPPAHOTS_.

The name was Nilesy’s fault. When they had bought the ship and signed on as official courtiers and traders, Lomadia had foolishly left Nilesy alone with the documents. She had learned to regret her mistake because of all the times Nilesy had insisted on using the full name. It was really quite embarrassing!

She was hoping that he wasn’t going to shove the whole name at these poor escapees from YogLabs. They had just been cruising along their usual shipping route when a distress beacon began to ring out over the ship’s loudspeakers, and of course bleeding heart Nilesy couldn’t help but to insist they rescue that poor pod with the YogLabs logo on it.

Lomadia did have a bleeding heart, too. She just prefered to not pick up strays that might lead to absolute bloody trouble, and these two were exactly that. The moment they stopped off at a port, they were dropping these two off and then going on their merry way.

They were going to approach the next port of call soon, Vic'evte. Lomadia went over to her perch behind the console and sat back, stretching her wings out and gazing out the viewscreens at the blue planet ahead of them. Behind her, she could hear Nilesy rattling off the name of the ship and explaining just what it means from the other room. Well, he was talking about the rich and storied history of the  F.S.S Lombucket involving generations of poolmakers and poolboys, once proud valets for the rich Sipsco dynasty, now proud courtiers partnered with the Loms of Owlandia. That whole thing was completely bullshit, but she let him have his fun.

That was all this was, really.

Just a bit of fun.

* * *

“Okay,” Nilesy said as he followed Lomadia out the door. “Now, if you ever want a pool, you know who to call, okay?”

The door slammed shut behind them.

The engines began to glow.

As the ship lifted off and away, Lomadia turned to Nilesy and facepalmed with both her hands and both her wings. “We are never going to pick up strays again, okay?” she said, muffled through her feathers.

Nilesy shrugged.

* * *

And on the ship so recently purloined, an important conversation was happening.

“We can’t name our ship the… whatever the hell they were naming it before. And it’s a pirate ship now! A pirate ship can’t be a pool ship, Nano.”

“Well, any suggestions?”

“How about… the… uh…”

“The Purple Panda.”

“... Why are the pandas purple?”

“Because they’re fluxed. Duuuuuuuuhhhhhhh, Lalna!”

“Uh, what about…”

“Yeah?”

“The… Purple Pandastar. Yeah, we’re the Purple Pandastar Pirates, and we’re here to take your booty!”

“Lalna.”

“What?”

“That sounds really stupid. I like it!”

And he was smiling, feeling free for the first time since his birth. They were going to be pirates, they were going to be space pirates and nothing could stop them now!

And so began the adventures of the Purple Pandastar Pirates.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope to write more for this, if my brain allows me.


End file.
